{"id":6361,"date":"2020-11-23T00:04:44","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T00:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.luthersem.edu\/story\/?p=6361"},"modified":"2021-08-27T18:20:23","modified_gmt":"2021-08-27T18:20:23","slug":"necessary-conversations-on-race-and-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.luthersem.edu\/story\/2020\/11\/23\/necessary-conversations-on-race-and-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Necessary conversations on race and racism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pastors learn to get comfortable being\u2014and inviting others to be\u2014uncomfortable for the sake of building stronger communities of faith, belonging, and justice<\/h2>\n

On a day set aside for difficult conversation, rain poured down.<\/p>\n

But the diverse crowd that gathered to hear the words stayed.<\/p>\n

The clouds darkened, and a sound system intended to amplify the speakers\u2019 voices shorted out not once, but twice.<\/p>\n

Still the crowd stayed.<\/p>\n

Winds whipped water droplets into people\u2019s eyes, their shoes sloshed, and the ground became saturated.<\/p>\n

But still the crowd stayed.<\/p>\n

Then the rain stopped, the clouds parted, and a rainbow stretched across the sky.<\/p>\n

And nobody would question Bonnie Wilcox \u201997 M.Div.<\/strong>, senior pastor at First Lutheran Church, who witnessed something more than refracting light.<\/p>\n

Nobody would doubt that those in the crowd saw God that day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A place to hear<\/h3>\n

It was not quite a month after the death of George Floyd, and Wilcox and her leadership team at First Lutheran, located in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights, Minnesota, continued to brainstorm about how the church community could best respond to the pain and unrest within the Twin Cities.<\/p>\n

Protests rippled throughout the metro area\u2014and around the world\u2014calling for justice after Floyd, a Black man, was killed by police on May 25. At the Minneapolis intersection where the encounter occurred, a collection of memorials rose up to remember Floyd and the many Black lives lost at the hands of police.<\/p>\n

In Columbia Heights, about seven miles north of the Longfellow neighborhood that was the epicenter of the unrest, Wilcox said the church community had a strong desire to respond to what was happening. The primarily white congregation wanted to do the right thing, though they weren\u2019t sure where to begin.<\/p>\n

To get some direction, Wilcox turned to community partners. \u201cWe talked to Black leaders in the Columbia Heights community and asked, \u2018What do you need?\u2019\u201d Wilcox said. \u201cThey said, \u2018We don\u2019t need anger; we need a place where people can hear our stories.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

So on the night of June 23, more than 100 people from the church and the Columbia Heights area came to hear Black community members share stories of how they had been discriminated against as immigrants, how racial slurs had been hurled at them and their children, how they feared for the safety of their children, and how they experience\u2014and try to forgive\u2014aggressions large and small.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe night of the rally, we thought we could invite our white neighbors in to learn how to have better conversations with people. The response was overwhelming,\u201d Wilcox said.<\/p>\n

The event wasn\u2019t the first conversation church leadership had with members of the community, and it would be far from their last.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to work at this,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can\u2019t just say \u2018It\u2019s four months now, so I guess we\u2019re done.\u2019 We have to acknowledge that long view of God working to do good in the world, despite all that humans are doing to block it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putting in the work<\/h3>\n

Nathan Roberts \u201912 M.Div.<\/strong>, First Lutheran\u2019s director of community engagement, said for many white people, conversations about race and racism are hard. No one wants to say the wrong thing, so they just don\u2019t say anything. Then a tragedy like Floyd\u2019s murder occurs, he said, and well-meaning people, often faith leaders, want to get involved but\u00a0they don\u2019t know how.<\/p>\n

\u201cRace and racism is a new conversation for many white people, but it is not a new conversation,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that people of color have been talking about around their dinner tables, something Black educators have studied and advised on, something Black leaders have been speaking out about for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roberts said it\u2019s challenging for pastors and faith leaders who often are more comfortable counseling a family through the death of a loved one than they are talking about race. They face their own insecurity of saying or doing the wrong thing, being vulnerable and having to admit they aren\u2019t well-versed on race, and realizing they can\u2019t make others immediately comfortable. \u201cHaving these conversation takes trust, and that trust takes a long time to build,\u201d Roberts said.<\/p>\n